Foreign Relations & International Law

Lawfare Daily: ‘The Criminal State’ with Lawrence Douglas

Tyler McBrien, Lawrence Douglas, Jen Patja
Wednesday, April 22, 2026, 7:00 AM
Discussing the evolution of international criminal justice.

On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Lawrence Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College to discuss Douglas’s new book, “The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice.”

They talk about how and why international criminal justice shifted from a focus at Nuremberg on the crime of aggression to an “atrocity paradigm,” as well as the “belatedness problem” and other limitations of atrocity trials. They even get into Douglas’s thoughts on casting decisions for Robert Jackson, Herman Göring, and characters in last year’s film “Nuremberg.” 

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Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare. He previously worked as an editor with the Council on Foreign Relations and a Princeton in Africa Fellow with Equal Education in South Africa, and holds an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago.
Lawrence Douglas is the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College, and author of “Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020.”
Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
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